I’m worried that the elite Florida Gators player would step down.
Not only does Tim Tebow claim to be the best Florida Gator to ever play college football, but he also has a claim to be the greatest player of all time.
He won 12 games for the third time as a senior, a national championship as a freshman, a Heisman Trophy as a sophomore, and a national championship as a starting quarterback as a junior. I doubt the Gators would have defeated Texas and Tebow would have won three titles in four years, two of which he would have started, had Florida defeated Alabama in that 2009 SEC Championship Game.
I firmly believe there would not have been a credible argument against Tebow as the greatest, most accomplished player in the history of the sport, even though there could have been debates about whether or not he was the best or most talented player in college football history—or on his own teams, thanks to Percy Harvin.
Furthermore, I continue to believe that Florida neither ought nor would have retired his No. 15.
Tebow is forever linked to that number in steel and bronze, both on top of The Swamp and outside of it, as a part of the Gators’ Ring of Honor and the Florida Heisman Statue Display. Countless fans have donned his jersey with and without his name; the total is probably in the millions. Tebow is not the only American athlete from this century whose number is more intimately identified with their sport than is Kobe Bryant with No. 15. Two other players on the list, LeBron James and Kobe Bryant, wore various numbers.
In less than five years, Loucheiz Purifoy of all people was making plays in No. 15 in Gainesville, Florida.
Anthony Richardson, who has much of Tebow’s ability and promise but just a small portion of his hype, will wear the number this autumn. This may be done more for the simple marketing tie-in to the evident AR-15 moniker than to carry on some of Tebow’s legacy. I’m not aware of any other Gators who are upset about this, perhaps since Kyle Trask wore Steve Spurrier’s No. 11 last fall when traveling to the Heisman Trophy ceremony.
As an athletic department, Florida doesn’t seem to be planning to retire a number. Given Tebow’s accomplishments and Eraste Autin’s tragic circumstances, retirement would have been completed by now for both players. Despite their apparently similar accomplishments, the Gators have also done nothing to retire the numbers of Joakim Noah or Al Horford, for example.
Thus, the history of the Florida Gators sportsmen becomes one of legacies upheld or betrayed, of success and succession or failure and follow-through. Richardson won’t be Tebow, of course, but he will evoke the memories and perhaps even come out of the shadows. Each player wearing number one has the potential to follow in the footsteps of Harvin or Keiwan Ratliff, or they might create their own unique legend by writing a new chapter in the history of a well-known number.
